


Blink (maybe i'm crazy)

by nessundorma345 (wastrelwoods)



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: And not nearly enough britpicking to make up for it, Gen, M/M, Post-Reichenbach, So yes mentions of suicide, Some Dark!Sherlock, because why not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-30
Updated: 2013-03-30
Packaged: 2017-12-06 22:42:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/740990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wastrelwoods/pseuds/nessundorma345
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At first, John thought they were real, and he talked to them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blink (maybe i'm crazy)

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by BBCSherlock headcanon #899, in which John has hallucinations of Sherlock post-Reichenbach.
> 
> ..I'm sorry.

The first time it happens, he's doing the shopping. Monotonous. Boring, Sherlock would have said. And yet here he is. Sometimes John wonders why he even bothers to do it anyway. Why he bothers to do anything anymore. He could just...stop. Any time. Follow Sherlock and jump off a building, swallow a pill, put a bullet in his mouth to match the one in his shoulder. The possibilities are endless. 

"Jesus, John." he chides himself, staring glumly at the back of a milk carton. "You haven't even reached the chip-and-pin yet." He closes his eyes tight and breathes deeply, very much aware that he's standing right in the middle of the aisle and very much not giving a fuck. 

"Bloody infuriating machines." Sherlock mutters out of the corner of his mouth, and John feels an embarrassed grin lift the corners of his lips. He opens his eyes. Sherlock stands there bold as brass with his hands buried in the pockets of his overcoat, and John smiles at him, a real smile. 

"Better get two, hmm? What do you do, drink it by the liter?" 

Sherlock tilts his head ever so slightly. "Maximum amount of vitamins per mouthful, leaves more time for important things. What is this? Half-and-half? Two percent, you idiot, you want two percent. Better yet, one-and-a-half."

"Sherlock, they don't even make one-and-a-half percent milk." He sighs, picking up another pint. 

"Of course they do." he says, gesturing over a shelf. Sure enough, one-and-a-half. John goes to procure a bottle, but Sherlock stops him. "No, no, no. Not that one, these have all been sour for a week! Which reminds me..." he trails off, lost in thought.

John groans, then notices the judgmental stare of a flabby, pointy-nosed woman farther down the dairy aisle. "Got another one that probably thinks we're an old married couple."

Sherlock doesn't raise his eyes from the yougurt, still thinking. "Oh, bugger her, she's sleeping with the clerk in lane seven. Didn't you notice her earrings?"

John smiles again, wondering vaguely what it was he was trying to remember. "Bread, milk, crisps...what was it you were asking me to pick up earlier, Sherlock? Not toes, because they definitely don't sell those here and you promised Mrs. Hudson to stop putting them in her crisper." Sherlock moans like a petulant child denied his pudding, then fixes him with a strange look. "What is it, Sherlock?" he asks after a few seconds of silence.

"Don't you remember, John? I told you you didn't need to pick up extra milk, because I don't need it." Something connects in his brain, and the world seems bright and lonely quite suddenly. "I'm dead, John."

And then he's standing alone in the middle of the aisle, and his hands shake so much that he nearly drops the carton.

*

He doesn't tell his therapist about it. He buys the extra carton, and drinks it all slowly. He does not cry.

*

The second time it happens is at Harry's. He's leaning comfortably back into the chair even though it reeks of cats - Clara has three - and cigarettes. He's here because Clara, her three cats, their son Hamish and nearly everything else are at Sussex, and if any night is a danger night for Harry, it's tonight. She's sprawled on the couch opposite, sucking on a cigarette-- earlier it was two, but John managed to convince her to take her time in destroying her lungs. Though at the pace her liver is going, it doesn't make much difference anyway.

"I don't get it, Johnny," she slurs. "I don't get why you get to march in here and hold an intervention. Not like you've got shit together any more than I do."

He closes his eyes and breaths deeply, taking secret comfort in the lingering tobacco smell. Used to smoke at Uni, and then Sherlock was always...damn. He groans, lowering his face into his hands. Harry sits up, one leg still hooked over the back of the couch, and stares at him. "Johnny?" 

He makes a noncommittal sound in the back of his throat. He hears her shift, standing warily. "I'll get us a cuppa, then, shall I?" The door clicks.

"She's been sober for two months, but of course gave up when Clara left three nights ago, presumably because she forgot an event or an anniversary...ah, no, it was the boy's birthday." Sherlock announces, pacing the room as he examines. John raises his head to watch. "Left a note, here under the London A-Z. She's phoned twelve..no, thirteen times, but Clara hasn't picked up. If you're worried about drugs, don't be, but she's smoked at least a pack per phone call and drunk half the Thames. Slight hyperbole, but in short I'd say there's nothing you can do but thank God she smokes so often." He breathes in deeply, self-satisfied smirk spreading over his face.

"Jesus, Sherlock. Timing." 

He glances over, brows knitted in confusion. "Not good?"

"No." he says, shifting the London A-Z and picking up the hastily scrawled note. 

"/Headed to Sussex to celebrate with Hamish's birth parents--Don't wait up./ God, I hate it when you're right, Sherlock." he groans, moving the book back to cover the note. His friend's eyes lower to the floor, then meet Johns. Empty. 

"I'm not right, John. I'm dead." 

Harry finds him there, sitting in the middle of the floor alone. She moves to sit beside him, passing a bottle. He swallows it down, not even bothering to look halfway disappointed in her at the appearance of the alcohol. Not exactly a cuppa, though, isn't it? Harry takes a drink, clapping an arm around her brother's shoulders. "Buggery fuck, aren't we a pair, Johnny?"

*

The third time, he looks out the window of his cab just long enough to see Sherlock standing at the corner, mouthing the word "Dead". The cabbie has to tell him they've reached Baker Street--Baker Street? Since when was he going to Baker Street? -- five times before he hears, and he pays up silently, slipping out of the cab and taking the long way home.

*

"You're limping again, John," his therapist notes. Hoping to inspire conversation. How could he possibly reply? What could he say? /Oh, that? Probably because I'm having hallucinations of my dead best friend and the stress is getting to me, just a little./

"Really? Hadn't noticed," he deadpans. She clears her throat, shooting him a sharp look and writing something in that infernal little book of hers.

"I can't help you unless you help yourself," she says calmly. He does not reply. Behind him, Sherlock rolls his eyes.

"That the best you can write? Recurring trauma from the war? Dull, and completely inaccurate." He mutters just loud enough for John to hear. "It's because I'm dead."

Six months and five days since the fall. The limp gets worse.

*

The fifteenth time (one year), he visits the grave again. To remind himself exactly why nothing is happening. Why everything is wrong. 

It's not like last time, with the afternoon sunshine dappling the headstone and turning it into a bloody fairy-tale scene. There's a proper rain this time, blurring everything. John shakes the hair from his eyes and wraps his jacket closer.

Sherlock Holmes, the grave says. Nothing else. No death date, certainly no birth date, as though the stone refuses to acknowledge that the name it bears means anything to anyone. John stands with the rain pouring down his back, and feels like he's drowning.

Sherlock stands on the other side of the grave, staring solemnly downwards. His lips are pressed so tightly together that they form a single discontented line. Tears mingle with the rain, it doesn't matter whose. After a time, their eyes meet. John blinks as if dazed, then turns and marches away, limping pitifully but refusing to resort to the cane. He does not see his friend disappear, this time. But he is long past caring about that.

*

That night is the first time he hears the music. 

*

"Playing the bloody violin at four in the morning again?" he asks over coffee the following day. Sherlock in his blue silk robe leans back in the chair with his feet on the table. Always as though he couldn't possibly bear to sit normally. Or sit at all, really. John never thought to ask why. 

"Bach." Sherlock quips, taking an orange from the table and tossing it high, following the arc lazily before reaching out and catching it again gracefully. "Thought it fit. He's decomposing instead of composing, now. Like me."

John sips his coffee demurely, before pulling a face and setting it down again."Sherlock, how many times do I have to tell you that I don't take sugar?" he snaps. .

The detective stands, pushing back the chair with a lingering screech. "Remember it yourself, John. I'm just a figment of your imagination, after all."

*

Sometimes when he sees Sherlock, he doesn't speak. Sometimes he can't speak, because he's lying on the floor and his eyes are empty and cold and wide and oh God the blood is everywhere...

Sometimes he only sees Sherlock for seconds, doing things he would normally do except without John. Walking down the street. He hears Sherlock call for a cab once, and feels his spirits soar and then crash. Sometimes, he will look up to the tops of buildings and see Sherlock silhouetted against the sky with his arms outstretched. 

Sometimes he has wings, huge black magnificent wings with iridescent hints of other colors trapped beneath. Sometimes he just has that sodding hat.

Every time John sees him, his heart cracks open just a bit further.

*

The twenty-third time it happens, he refuses to acknowledge anything, because he's at a bloody crime scene and talking to dead men is the sort of thing that you're not supposed to do when surrounded by half of Scotland Yard. 

Kristin Rosenbaum. 34. Teacher, divorcee, shot herself in the head. Her apartment is cluttered and bloody hard to navigate with a cane. Added to that, the skirt she's wearing is fucking pink. 

"Greg, why am I even here?" he says, crouching over the body. The DI shrugs a little, gesturing for the others to back off. 

He crouches beside John carefully, and whispers, "I believe in Sherlock Holmes."

John just laughs, because what if the thing wasn't Sherlock inventing Moriarty, but John inventing Sherlock? The thoughts that buzz through his head are loud, dark, angry things, and he's long since grown past caring enough to be afraid of them.

"Look, you worked with the best we had for eighteen months. Five minutes?" Lestrade pleads. John complies, shifting his bad leg around to give him a better look at the situation. "Out, everybody! Give our consultant his room!" And they do.

Sherlock clears his throat. "She wasn't--"

"Shut up. Just shut up." Her mouth smells sour. What the hell does that mean? Strange enough, though, the wound in her head barely bleeds.

"She took a--"

"Sherlock, please just sod off."

"...as I was saying, it wasn't--"

He stands up faster than he previously thought possible. "SHUT. UP."

There is silence in the room for a time. Sherlock leans casually back against the wall, eyes flickering over the body. "Van Coon." he mutters, then vanishes.

Symptoms consistent with a poisoning and yet here she is with a bullet in her temple. The gun is still in her hand. 

John shakes his head to clear it, Sherlock's Parthenian Shot still echoing in his ears. Van Coon. Who was Van--oh. 

And suddenly, he sees it. The worn nail polish on the fingers of her left hand. The oddly tilted writing on the calendar. The pencil habitually set to the left of the notepad on the coffee table. The bullet wound in the right side of her head. John smiles a little, though of course it doesn't reach his eyes.

"I can't tell you much, but I can say this," he tells Greg, "She wasn't shot until after she was dead. She was poisoned, choked on her own vomit about twelve hours ago, and her corpse arrived here two or three hours after that."

"You see, John? It's so obvious if you know where to look." Sherlock says proudly, half-jostling him with an incorporeal elbow. John ignores him as he's learned to do. Because he's right. It's all in his head.

*

Doesn't make it hurt any less. The violin that used to soothe his nightmares keeps him up longer and longer. He sees Sherlock at every crime scene, and so he gives up with a murmured apology to Greg about his knee. He sees him perched on the edge of every building in sodding London, and it hurts so much that he finds himself walking with his eyes glued to the ground in front of him. 

And the worst part is that it isn't enough. 

"I'm not a ghost," Sherlock gripes from behind him, and John just barely staunches the urge to throw a jam jar at him because he's got enough sanity left to his name to realize that that would be a bad thing. He's standing too close, John can feel his phantom breath on the back of his neck. 

"You're bloody well haunting me, aren't you?" John mutters, teeth clenched. What stage of grief is this, anyway? Anger? Did he ever make it past denial? It's a far sight from acceptance, at any rate.

Sherlock hums in thought. "Yes, I suppose I am. But would you rather I leave?" John freezes. The million pound question. He puts the jam back on the shelf, shakily. "Would you rather be alone?" Sherlock's voice is distorted, mocking, cruel. He can feel the smirk spread across his face like blood spreading in water, and John screws his eyes shut tight to keep the demons out.

"I am alone."

*

It rains again, the second anniversary of the fall. John spends it at home this time, staring glumly into his tea and trying to ignore Sherlock, who's playing his own requiem with an absorbed urgency.

*

"Why didn't you listen to me?"

John raises an eyebrow, uncomprehending. "Listen to you when?"

"On the rooftop." Sherlock struts from on end of the Spartan room to the other in a motion he claims is dignified pacing. 

"I told you," John says, closing the lid of the laptop. "I didn't believe that you told me a lie."

"Didn't?"

He taps a finger against the side of the case distractedly. "Things change. I suppose it wasn't ever you, really. I lied to myself. Thought you were real."

Sherlock stares out the window. "Is that what you think, John? That I never existed?" His tone is neither accusing nor mocking, it simply is.

"I don't know." He clears his throat, still fiddling with the laptop. "I really don't know, Sherlock."

"What if I was alive?" 

Bart's rooftop. Sherlock's phone, lying abandoned by the edge. The snap of bone on pavement. Blood. Empty eyes the same shade as the sky. A pale wrist with no sluggish pulse to give it life. John sets his jaw. "It would take an idiot as brilliant as Sherlock Holmes to pull that off."

*

Two years, seven months, sixteen days, and over fifty hallucinations. This is when Sherlock stops appearing, and somehow that's even worse than before. 

Past denial, onwards into anger. John learns soon enough that punching walls doesn't help, and settles for severing every tie he's managed to maintain over these years with everyone he knows by snapping and occasionally punching them instead. Goodbye, Harry, we never did get along anyway. So long, Greg, sorry about the black eye. Hate to see us part, Mary, too bad I could never get over my old flatmate enough to stop seeing him in you. Sorry I don't regret it. 

Anger is an unexpectedly short phase, all told, because sooner or later he just ends up more alone than ever.

*

This is how he bargains: my life for his.

John stands on the same rooftop three years into his own living hell. Unlike Sherlock, he has no audience. It's alright, that's not what matters. What matters is that this, this last grand gesture, bravery or stupidity or whatever it may be, that this changes everything. 

"If you're listening, Sherlock. I just think you ought to know something." Everything looks different from up here. Cleaner. Simpler.

He does not want to cry, he's gone three years stubbornly not crying and he is not about to break the record now. Then again, he supposes, it's the last chance he'll get. He addresses the empty air again. "This is my note."

No reply. Obviously.

"If you were dying," he mumbles, only half to himself and half to someone who was never really there, "in your last few moments, what would you say?" John pauses, as if to give someone a chance to reply. He fists his trembling hands tighter into his jacket, sucking in a deep breath. One step closer to the edge.

John looks down, and then up, and then straight ahead. He quirks a meaningless smile. "Please, God, let him live."

He lets himself fall.

*

Suddenly, he stops.

The hand that closes around John's arm is cold, but the grip is strong. He is tugged back, back, in a rush of air and sound. Strong arms wrap around him in a way that is meant to seem comforting but ultimately restrain him.

John keeps his eyes shut tight. Ghosts cannot be real if you cannot see them. The ghost makes a low, broken noise in the back of his throat. 

"Leave me alone," John hisses, struggling unsuccessfully, all military training forsaken. This is about getting free, getting away, running and running until he can stop feeling. "You're dead! You're dead, you aren't real, let me go!"

The ghost loosens his grip, steps back. Silence. John opens his eyes, and meets Sherlock's gaze. Tears stain his cheeks, his hair is whipped by the angry wind. All of the air rushes out of John's lungs, and he falls to his knees. 

"I'm alive, John."


End file.
